Monthly Archives: October 2008

Fri. 10.31.08 – ‘Tis the end of a season and the beginning of another. Here in Southern California, we had our first real rain early this morning and expect some more tomorrow, hopefully this is the beginning of a good rainy season that will break our drought. If the saying that we follow New Zealand is true, then all will be well, as NZ was quite wet the last few months.
For others this is the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It is the end of the harvest season for many parts of the northern hemisphere and the beginning of the fallow time. A time where each night grows darker until winter solstice. It is a time to remember and look back, as well as a time to look forward and up to something greater.
Be it a candle in a pumpkin, a bonfire, or a five stared lamp, however you celebrate this week, Happy Halloween, Samhain, Diwali (Deepavali), All Saints Day, and Dia de los Muertos to one and all!

Thur 10.30.08 – Here in Southern California our metrological year starts on July 1st. Our Rain Season is possible from Oct. to April, but the rain we count on is Jan. to March.
We need rain, so hopefully it will start tonight.

Tues 10.28.08 – The below screenshot slideshow is a pictorial tutorial on how to use the Nokia viNe (formerly LifeviNe) mobile application. Click on the first photo at the top and navigate through the lightbox slideshow. Detailed notes are below. If you have questions, please comment below and I will do my best to answer your questions, but please see the Troubleshooting post.
Here is the companion posts I have written on Nokia viNe:
* Troubleshooting / Bug Report post, please comment there with your troubleshooting tips and bug reports on the Nokia viNe Mobile app.
* My previous post on Nokia’s (life) viNe with some how to.The Tutorial:
A) Before you start, please make sure that you have already set up a Sports Tracker account at sportstracker.nokia.com or do it from the mobile Nokia viNe application. The way that the Nokia viNe app works is that the mobile app will upload your photos and video from your mobile to your Sports Tracker Account.
B) Then you can get the Maps + Photography widget and display your Nokia viNe journeys / photos / video on your website or Facebook or other spots online. If you are a participant in the Nseries.com Nokia viNe campaign / project, then you can view your uploaded journeys at the Nseries Nokia viNe flash interface.

Nokia’s viNe mobile application (formerly known as LifeviNe) is the second major iteration of the Sports Tracker Mobile application.
The Sports Tracker mobile app for Series 60 devices (Nseries or Eseries, etc) is a great application for you to keep track of and monitor the metrics of your sports activities. The nice folk at Nokia have taken the Sports Tracker app and forked the code to use the same base functionality but redesign and re-purpose it for folks who want to geo-map/track their photos & videos – thus Nokia viNe.
Currently, the Nokia viNe mobile app is in a moderately closed beta testing phase where various bloggers and other folk have been sent Nokia N82s and Nokia N96s with Nokia viNe pre-installed on the phone. If you have a S60 phone and want to use the most of the same functionality, then the Sports Tracker mobile app should supply most of your geo-tracking photo / video needs until Nokia viNe is released to the big world.
Let me breakdown the three major steps that are taken to get the photos and/or videos with the GPS geo-data to the web and then displayed in a way that you can share with other folk:
1) The Nokia viNe mobile application (or until the viNe app is released publically, then the Sports Tracker mobile app) is installed on your Nokia Series 60 (Nseries or Eseries) mobile devices. Once you activate the mobile app, and start recording your “Journey”, then whatever photos or video or music you have listened to will be added to the GPS geo-path that you have taken while you are recording with the app.
2) When you upload your “Journey” and attendant media from your mobile to the web, it is sent to your Sports Tracker account on the sportstracker.nokia.com website. You can login to Sports Tracker online to see your journeys or workouts, where one can see that the photos and videos have been uploaded from your mobile device to the web.
3) Then the display… Given that Sports Tracker is a sports site and that is its main focus, Nokia has kindly provided a few other avenues for web display: 1) the Maps + Photography widget that will display the geo-tracked photos and video that you have uploaded or 2) one can view the Nokia viNe participant’s photos / video / music at the Nokia viNe flash interface at the Nseries.com website.
Thus the chain of interaction is as such:
mobile app -> Sports Tracker -> widget/website
If you are having problems with your Nokia viNe or Sports Tracker mobile application, then the first place to start in troubleshooting is to determine where the problem lies:
a) The mobile app
b) The online Sports Tracker account that is the intermediary between the mobile app and the widget / web display
c) The widget / web display
In the 6 weeks I have been using Nokia vine most of the the bugs or troubles I have encountered have been either with the mobile application or in the transfer of the data and media from the mobile device to the Sports Tracker server.
The first two things I do when I encounter any problems is to first check that my connection to the internet, be it data or wifi, is working and connected. Then if things are still going wrong, I log into my Sports Tracker account to see if the Journey was uploaded and if all the images were uploaded.
These two steps help me to troubleshoot and solve about 99% of the problems that I have encountered with my Nokia viNe app so far.

All Photos taken by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N82 at the Haute Dog Howl’o’ween Parade, Oct 26, 2008, in Long Beach, CA.
To view the Lightbox slideshow, please click on the thumbnail you wish to see and then use the “Next” & “Previous” to maneuver through the slideshow.
Big thanks to all the folks at Haute Dogs for putting on a fun parade and many thanks to our own Scruffy McDoglet & Belle Le Cane for being willing to be dressed up and sit on a dog parade float!
Update: More photos of the Howloween Dog Parade can be found at howloween.info.